Britney Sexes Up Shows On Tour

The Singer, Due Monday In Orlando, Has Honed Her Madonna Persona, Angering Some Fans.

March 28, 2004|By Jim Abbott, Sentinel Pop Music Critic

JACKSONVILLE -- There used to be a lot more cotton candy in the audience at a Britney Spears concert -- and a lot less beer.

"This is the best day of my life," said Jennifer Forsthoefel, 21, who timed a quick run for a brew just before Spears' "Onyx Hotel" show started Thursday at Veterans Memorial Arena. "This is out of control!"

The tour, which will be broadcast live from Miami at 9 tonight on Showtime and hits Orlando's TD Waterhouse Centre on Monday, is the pop star's most sexually charged production ever.

No more bubblegum. No coy teasing.

The new Britney wants to throw you down on the bed and spend the night together -- or enjoy a little bump-and-grind in an airplane lavatory, which she does in a scene from the video for "Toxic," the new hit from her In the Zone album.

Families are welcome at the Onyx Hotel, but it's really more of an adult establishment. The median age of Britney Nation is older now, populated by college students as well as middle-schoolers.

Forsthoefel, who came to Jacksonville with a contingent of 100 Zeta Tau Alpha sorority sisters from the University of Florida, scanned the kids with concern.

"It's not a teen-oriented show," she said, sporting a "Zetas In the Zone" T-shirt. "The show is sex, sex, sex."

"Toxic" was the opening song in Jacksonville, which the 22-year-old singer performed in a skin-tight black bodysuit, perched atop a giant metallic motorized room-service cart. Seven dancers, attired as hotel minions, gyrated and pawed at her.

VISUAL CORNUCOPIA

With its towering three-story video screen and mammoth banks of Vegas-worthy lights, the show is easily the singer's most visually striking. There's also more skin than ever before, marked by suggestive bath and bedroom scenes that accompany the steamy "Touch of My Hand" and "Breathe on Me."

Spears delivers the former, a song about self-gratification, in a sequined flesh-colored bodysuit, sprawled in a transparent glass bathtub. Below her, a male dancer clad only in briefs writhes on a bed.

In a pink bra and panties, Britney joins him for "Breathe on Me," which culminates with a sweaty make-out session at center stage.

It was all too much for Angel Rossie, a Jacksonville woman who attended with her four daughters, ages 11 to 15.

"To be honest, I was appalled," said Rossie, 43. "I thought I was a pretty liberal mom, but I've been married for 22 years, and I thought it was porn."

Another mother, Joey Zook, 33, talked with her daughter Taylor, 9, before the show about what they might see. Zook, vacationing from San Diego, still was shocked.

"A lot of kids probably haven't been exposed to that," she said. "That requires a very big explanation."

It didn't bother other parents.

Teresa Dixon of Jacksonville bought seats next to the stage as a birthday present for her 17-year-old daughter, Valerie. An uncanny Spears look-alike, the high-school student attracted plenty of stares outside the arena.

"She's herself," said Valerie, explaining her admiration for the pop star. "Everybody grows up, and she's like everybody else. She has to grow up and become a woman."

Teresa Dixon doesn't worry about her daughter emulating a sex symbol. She said the media focus too much on negative celebrity stories.

"I don't think anyone is going to influence her. Britney is a young woman, growing up into her own, and my daughter has grown up watching her."

Dr. Jose Perez, a Gainesville physician, brought his three daughters, ages 14, 19 and 20, though he opted to watch the NCAA basketball tournament at a nearby restaurant.

"She's like mainstream America," Perez said of Spears' sexual focus. "If I were worried about this, I wouldn't live here."

ROCKY YEARS RECENTLY

Britney's new maturity hasn't come without bumps along the way. Her film debut was a flop, and she bailed out of her unsuccessful New York restaurant.

There was the tabloid breakup with Justin Timberlake and her 55-hour Las Vegas marriage. The racy tone of her current tour is generating more headlines partly because of the heightened sensitivity of the post-Janet Jackson era.

Amid all the diversions, In the Zone has sold more than 2 million copies and sparked a hit in "Toxic,'' which is her first No. 1 song on radio charts since "Oops . . . I Did It Again" four years ago.

"It's the combination of the attention she's getting and the song," said Sean Ross, a radio analyst with Edison Media Research in Somerville, N.J. "Publicity by itself isn't enough."

That has proved to be the case for Janet Jackson, whose infamous Super Bowl stunt hasn't generated much interest in "Just a Little While," the first single from her new Damita Jo album, in stores Tuesday.

"Being talked about, especially in teasing tones, will not prompt radio programmers to play a song they don't think their audience wants to hear," said Geoff Mayfield, chart director at Billboard magazine. "R. Kelly has dodged some pretty shady publicity with songs that clearly connected with an audience, but it didn't help Janet Jackson."